No abstract

Authors are permitted to self-archive the peer-reviewed (but not final) version of a contribution on the contributor's personal website, in the contributor's institutional repository or archive, subject to an embargo period of 24 months for social science and humanities (SSH) journals and 12 months for scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals following publication of the final contribution.http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-817011.html Organized crime has become a popular subject among social scientists in recent years. One side of this emerging literature focuses on the origins of criminal organizations, and points to the distribution of natural resources and the weakness of the institutional environment as key determining factors (Gambetta, 1993;Bandiera, 2003;Dimico et al., 2012;Konrad and Skaperdas, 2012;Buonanno et al., 2014). Another branch analyzes the consequences of organized crime in terms of economic growth (Pinotti, 2014), firm productivity (Albanese and Marinelli, 2013), government efficiency (Godson and Williams, 1998;Allum and Siebert, 2003), Mastrobuoni (2014) takes an interesting alternative approach by studying the economic value of network connections within the Italian-American mafia in the 1960s. Given the clandestine nature of, and key role of reputation in, criminal organizations, this provides a particularly appealing setting to assess the importance of social networks for economic success.Although often showing strong effects of criminal organizations on socio-economic outcomes, the mechanisms underlying these relations have received much less attention. One recent exception is the theoretical framework of Dal Bó et al. (2006). They show that the ability of 'pressure groups' to offer bribes to, or impart punishments on, politicians is inversely related to elected politicians' quality (measured by their ability). This clearly reflects one potential explanation for poorer economic outcomes in areas where organized crime (which represents one possible 'pressure group' that may resort to bribes and punishments) is most prevalent and politically active. Dal Bó et al. (2006) also illustrate, however, that the strength/weakness of the institutional framework is crucial. Indeed, the negative relation between pressure groups and political quality weakens when law enforcement strengthens -suggesting that the negative political (and thereby economic) effects of organized crime can be mitigated by an appropriate institutional framework.The former prediction -i.e. a negative relation between bribe-and-punishment pressure groupsand politicians' quality -has obtained some empirical support. Acemoglu et al. (2013), for instance, use Columbian data to illustrate that political parties obtaining more votes in areas where paramilitaries are concentrated see more of their politicians arrested for illegal activities.Pinotti (2013) employs southern Italian data to show that increased activity of criminal organizations prior to elections is associated with lower human capital of elected poli...

The current economic crisis has triggered fierce debates among policy-makers and the media across and within European countries about the need for a closer European Fiscal Union. Using a novel dataset derived from the Eurobarometer surveys, this article investigates European citizens' opinions towards such fiscal integration. We find that both country-level variables (such as expected country-level costs/benefits) and individual-level variables (such as distrust towards EU institutions, ideology and altruism) have significant explanatory power. We also uncover a notable intra-generational divide across young citizens of Euro creditor and Euro debtor countries, and show that this reflects their varying expectations regarding the future costs and benefits of fiscal integration. This demonstrates that the same demographic groups in different countries may have widely varying positions towards fiscal integration.

This paper investigates whether the COVID-19 crisis has affected the way we think about (political) institutions, as well as our broader (policy) attitudes and values. We fielded large online survey experiments in Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, well into the first wave of the epidemic (May-June), and included outcome questions on trust, voting intentions, policies & taxation, and identity & values. With a randomised survey ow we vary whether respondents are given COVID-19 priming questions first, before answering the outcome questions. With this treatment design we can also disentangle the health and economic effects of the crisis, as well as a potential "rally around the ag" component. We find that the crisis has brought about severe drops in interpersonal and institutional trust, as well as lower support for the EU and social welfare spending financed by taxes. This is largely due to economic insecurity, but also because of health concerns. A rallying effect around (scientific) expertise combined with populist policies losing ground forms the other side of this coin, and suggests a rising demand for competent leadership.